Table and video poker games are well known. With reference to the electronic video poker games, in a typical game a player makes a selected wager and initiates the play of the game. The processor of the video poker game is programmed to select from a suitable memory structure containing data representing 52 cards of a deck, data representative of a 5 card opening holding. These 5 cards are displayed face up for the player to see. The player can discard some or all of t he cards whereupon the processor from the data structure replaces the discarded cards to define a final holding or hand. If the hand corresponds to a pre-determined schedule or table of poker holdings, e.g. a pair of Jacks or better, four-of-a-kind, flush, the player is awarded a payoff.
There are video poker variations such as deuces wild, where the deuces of the deck of cards are wild, Joker's wild where an additional Joker is included in the deck and which is wild as well as Joker/deuces wild games.
A drawback of these type of games is that large jackpots cannot be offered. Usually the highest jackpot is paid for a royal flush which is, for a machine which accepts 5 coins or tokens as a maximum wager, 4000 tokens or coins based upon the maximum play. The use of progressive machines linked together which assemble a progressive jackpot until a royal flush is obtained, can provide higher payoffs. However, because of the probabilities for obtaining an outcome such as a royal flush, jackpots cannot be offered of tens of thousands or millions times the amounts of the wager. It is well known that offering large jackpots entices players to play the game.
To overcome the inability to offer large prizes in video poker it is known to vary the play thereof for example as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,531,441 issued Jul. 2, 1996 to Dabrowski. According to this patent, two distinct opening holdings or hands are selected from data representing different decks. The opening holdings are displayed. If one or more of the cards of the opening holdings match each other in suit and/or position an award is provided. Thereafter the player selects which of the opening holdings to play and plays the selected hand according to the technique described above. Because the odds of cards dealt from two distinct decks will be of the same suit and occupy the same position in separate hands are quite low, significant jackpots can be offered for matching hands.
In the aforementioned games, the player's success with the hand is often based upon the opening holding and the player's luck in obtaining suitable replacement cards. Since they can only play one hand at a time, a poor initial holding usually means that the player will lose all of their wager. This can be frustrating to a player who perceives that he/she is continually receiving poor initial holdings and, as a result, losing their wagers. There is therefore a need for a game which offers a player greater opportunities to win at least a portion of their initial wager back and which can offer significant jackpots.